Quotes

Discourse on the Psalms 

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By Saint Augustine 

“The desire of one’s heart constitutes one’s prayer. There is a hidden anguish which is inaudible to us… If your desire lies open to the one who is your God and who sees your secret, God will answer you. For the desire of your heart is itself your prayer. And if the desire is constant, so is your prayer.

The Apostle Paul had purpose in saying: ‘Pray without ceasing.’ Are we then ceaselessly to bend our knees, to lie prostrate, or to lift up our hands? Even if we admit that we pray in this fashion, I do not believe that we can do so all the time.

Yet there is another, interior kind of prayer without ceasing, namely, the desire of the heart.

Whatever else you may be doing, if you but fix your desire on God’s Sabbath rest, your prayer will be ceaseless. Therefore, if you wish to pray without ceasing, do not cease to desire. The constancy of your desire will itself be the ceaseless voice of your prayer… If your love is without ceasing, you are crying out always; if you always cry out, you are always desiring; and if you desire, you are calling to mind your eternal rest in the Lord… If the desire is there, then the groaning is there as well. Even if people fail to hear it, it never ceases to sound in the hearing of God.”

Augustine of Hippo, also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Africa (died 430 AD).

Praise is the Harvest of Love

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By Abraham Joshua Heschel

“The secret of spiritual living is the power to praise. Praise is the harvest of love. Praise precedes faith. First we sing, then we believe.

The fundamental issue is not faith but sensitivity and praise, being ready for faith. To be overtaken with the awe of God is not to entertain a feeling, but to share in a spirit that permeates all being… We praise with the pebbles on the road which are like petrified amazement, with all the flowers and trees which look as if hypnotized in silent devotion.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Polish-American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and philosophers of the 20th century.

When You Say Kaddish 

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By Lynda Sexson

“When I die, if you need to weep, cry for someone walking on the street beside you.

And when you need me, put your arms around others and give them what you need to give me.

You can love me most by letting hands touch hands and souls touch souls. You can love me most by sharing your simchas and multiplying your mitzvot. You can love me most by letting me live in your eyes and not in your mind.

And when you say Kaddish for me, remember what our Torah teaches: Love doesn’t die, people do. So when all that’s left of me is love, give me away.

Memory is an imaginal constellation of past and present that generates a new experience. Memory is not the storing of the past, but the storying of the present.”

From Ordinarily Sacred (1992): University of Virginia Press.

Prayer and Action

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By Rabbi David Saperstein

“In the Jewish tradition, the separation between prayer and action is slight. We’re mindful of the admonition in Isaiah where God says, ‘I don’t want your fast and your sacrifice. I want you to deal your bread to the hungry, tear apart the chains of the oppressed.’

And Leviticus 19 tells us that to be holy in the way God is holy means to set aside a corner of our fields for the poor and homeless, to pay the laborer a timely and fair wage, and to remove stumbling blocks. These are religious activities just as much as prayer is. They are all woven together.

After participating in the civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of this century’s great religious figures and a close colleague of Martin Luther King, said, ‘It felt like my feet were praying.’ Prayer is not just the communication we have with God; it is also the work we do to make God’s values real to the world. I think God listens to both kinds of prayer with equal joy.”

Rabbi David Saperstein is an American rabbi, lawyer, and Jewish community leader.

The Long Loneliness

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By Dorothy Day 

“The only answer to this life, to the loneliness we are all bound to feel, is community. The living together, working together, sharing together, loving God and loving our brother and sister, and living close to them in community so we can show our love for God.”

Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist, and anarchist who started the Catholic Worker movement.

On Peace

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From Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II

“Peace is more than the absence of war, more than the maintenance of balance of power between enemies. It is more than the firm hold of a dictator that, for the moment, involves no bloodshed. But then, what is peace?

Peace is the result of justice. When society is rightly ordered, when people live as God intends, then peace reigns. Peace must be constantly built up. Human nature must be called again and again to make peace.

But even this is not sufficient. Peace comes, in the end, from love.

When we love our neighbor, even those who irritate us or alienate us, then we give peace its only chance. Unless people willingly come together to share their talents and bright minds, peace cannot be achieved.”

Jewish Quotations on Spirituality and Action

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Rabbi Hillel: “If not now, when?”

Rabbi Yaakov Meyer: “Even the seemingly insignificant act is significant when it is part of many cumulative acts. Great people aren’t made from one great action; rather they become great via consistently good ‘small acts.'”

Albert Einstein: “There are two ways to live. You can live as if nothing is a miracle. You can live as if everything is a miracle.”

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Jewish Quotations on Wisdom and Wonder

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Solomon Ibn Gabirol: “Man is wise only while in search of wisdom; when he imagines he has attained it, he is a fool.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel: “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement… Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

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Friendship with the Poor

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From A Theology of Liberation, Gustavo Gutiérrez

“If there is no friendship with them [the poor] and no sharing of the life of the poor, then there is no authentic commitment to liberation, because love exists only among equals.”

Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, OP is a Peruvian philosopher, Catholic theologian, and Dominican priest, regarded as one of the founders of Latin American liberation theology.

Where True Identity Lies

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By Sue Monk Kidd

When I was six years old someone asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” At that age, living in a small Georgia town in the 1950s, I could only think of four careers for women—they were the only stories I knew: teacher, nurse, secretary, and housewife. By some process of elimination, I picked nurse. From that moment on, I began to get little nurse kits for my birthdays.

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